


DIY Bleach

by downjune



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Oral Sex, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Wall Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-09-24 01:07:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20349826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/downjune/pseuds/downjune
Summary: She catches up with Steve after he busts his crew out of the Raft, and it sucks being on the run again. Dumping all her secrets on the internet two years ago hadn’t changed much for her because she was an Avenger. For the first time in her life, she’d had a true posse.Now she has this—a rented set of rooms on the outskirts of Munich with Sam watching TV across the hall and Steve shut in the bathroom with her while she hacks off her hair.





	DIY Bleach

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sodium_amytal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sodium_amytal/gifts).

> It is my deeply held belief that both Steve and Natasha are clumsy failboats when it comes to relationships, but that doesn't stop them from loving each other. Whether that love involves romance, I will leave up to you, the reader! I hope you enjoy this, sodium_amytal!

DIY Bleach

She catches up with Steve after he busts his crew out of the Raft, and it sucks being on the run again. Dumping all her secrets on the internet two years ago hadn’t changed much for her because she was an Avenger. For the first time in her life, she’d had a true posse. 

Now she has this—a rented set of rooms on the outskirts of Munich with Sam watching TV across the hall and Steve shut in the bathroom with her while she hacks off her hair. She’d had it braided and tucked into the collar of her coat, covered with a hat. Now she drops the rope of hair into the trash and eyes the DIY bleach ingredients in her backpack.

“You’re really goin’ for it, huh?” Steve says quietly, arms crossed over his chest as he leans against the sink next to her. It’s a double-sink vanity—what a luxury. 

“Guess I’m finally famous,” she answers, snipping aggressively at the ragged ends of her hair. “No one used to recognize me on the street.”

“A wanted poster will do that.” Steve shrugs ruefully. “And you never really slid under the radar, you know that.”

She cocks an eyebrow at him, and it catches her attention in the mirror. Those will have to go too. “Are you saying I’m a bad spy?”

His gaze drops briefly below her neck to trace her figure. With Steve’s eyes on her, she has “a figure,” not just a bundle of useful assets. “I’m saying you know how to be seen.” He pushes away from the sink. “Good grief, let me finish that before your earlobe ends up on the floor.” 

She glares at him but hands over the scissors when he reaches for them. “And I guess you’ve been to beauty school.”

“No, but I think I’m in a slightly better place emotionally to be wielding scissors. And I can see the back of your head to cut a straight line.”

“Fine. Do you need me to sit on the toilet?”

He smirks. “No, you’re plenty short enough.”

It’s true, and she’s never wished to be taller, so she shrugs and braces both hands on the edge of the counter. Steve looms behind her, and after a moment, combs his fingers through the cropped length of her hair. It reaches just below her ears, blunt and uneven. She’d straightened it before she hit the road and left behind everything but a few changes of clothes. She’s going to miss that flatiron. 

“Shoulders down,” Steve murmurs.

“What?” she startles.

“At ease, soldier,” he tells her and taps her shoulders where they’re stuck up by her ears, stiff from her flight and all the tension besides.

She takes a slow breath and lets them slide down her back. The pads of Steve’s fingers are rough against the back of her neck, and she twitches a shiver. 

“Sorry,” he says.

“It feels good,” she admits. Steve neatens up the back of her hair and pulls his fingers through the length of it to make sure he’s not missing any pieces. He doesn’t try to avoid touching her neck again. 

Which is when Natasha realizes how long it’s been since anyone’s touched her like this. Since she let anyone touch her, period. By reflex, she lifts her eyes to the mirror to see him, then just as reflexively looks away when they briefly meet in the glass. 

_Don’t be a wuss_, she scolds silently and looks at him again. 

“Hold still. I wanna get it right,” he says. “You’re hair’s so straight, there’s not a lot of room for error.”

“It’ll curl as soon as I wash it,” she answers, unsure why exactly he needs that bit of information. “It can be a little uneven. Who have I got to be tidy for now?”

He snips a bit of hair by her ear and lowers the scissors. “Nat, I’m real sorry you got dragged into this. You signed the damn Accords—you played by their rules, and they threw you to the wolves. It’s not right.”

“Are you the wolf in this scenario?” She keeps her tone light and her mouth curled in a smile.

“I’m—I know what you were trying to do. I know you were trying to make it work.”

“But you still couldn’t just sign the damn things. We _would’ve_ made it work. We could’ve made changes.” Oh, look, she’s still mad about it.

“After we’d already signed everything away?” He shakes his head. “That’s not how you surrender. Ross wasn’t going to give an inch.”

“Maybe not, but I did,” she bites back. “I bent over backward, and I still lost everything. We lost everything.”

He has the decency to look away, though she knows he doesn’t regret his decisions. If only she could see the world as clearly as Steve Rogers. Or maybe she does. Maybe it’s him who can’t see all the gray.

“Not everything,” he says, voice just above a whisper. He lifts the scissors to her hair and trims a few more ends, his fingers light on the sensitive skin just by her ear. 

“No,” she admits, keeping her voice low enough to preserve the hush of the bathroom. The TV is a muffled presence through the door. “This place is really nice. I love the countertops.” 

Steve huffs and carefully places the scissors back in the vanity drawer. They were from the kitchen, but whatever. “All right, smartass, turn around and let me see.” 

She turns in place, shakes out her hair, and gives him the smile with dimples. “Is it cute?”

He’s not looking at the haircut, his eyes locked with hers. “Sure,” he answers. She can see him swallow.

With a slight hop, she jumps up to sit on the sink. He still towers over her. She spreads her knees, her skin humming from his touch. Fuck, it’s been a long time. 

She doesn’t really miss it. Nothing she can’t take care of with batteries when the need strikes. But Steve just had scissors at her throat and his fingers on her scalp, and she wants…she wants him to make her feel that all over. She wants him to make her feel.

“How long’s it been for you, soldier?” she asks, voice rough. 

Steve’s still looking right at her. He’s always been good like that. “Since you and me, the last time,” he answers.

“That was two years ago.”

“Yeah.” He doesn’t sound embarrassed. One of a kind, Steve Rogers. “What about you?”

“Just a little more recent than that.” She leaves the sarcasm ambiguous in her voice so maybe he can’t tell that she’s being quite literal. She’d found someone else right after him, someone nothing like him, to get him off her skin and out of her mouth. She’d never have him again, so she’d tried to forget him as soon as possible. She, a former-Russian spy, had deflowered Captain America. Susan B. Anthony or FDR or somebody was rolling in their grave. 

She’d been wrong, though, and she’d failed, because here they are, in this damp bathroom outside Munich, and her pulse is pounding in her ears and between her legs. “So, you never, with Sharon?” she asks, just to say something. “She really was nice.”

“Yeah, and Peggy’s niece, so it was weird,” he says in that aw-shucks way of his. He shrugs and makes a face, and Natasha likes him so fiercely it could be love. How the hell would she know? “We,” he continues, “you and I, have unfinished business.” He steps closer so that her knee nudges his thigh.

“Do we?”

He nods. “Uh huh. What you did for me was… It really meant a lot. And I don’t think I’ve paid you back in kind.”

“Don’t sweat it. I was just doing my patriotic duty.” She shrugs too, just to prove how casual all this is. In truth, there’d been a lot of sweat and very little that felt dutiful or casual on her part.

“You’re Russian, so what does that mean?” he asks with a wry smile. 

“Consider it my pitch for US citizenship, then. Service to my future country.” 

“And that’s all it was to you.” He doesn’t phrase it like a question, but she can still hear him asking.

She hesitates, but Steve has always had a way of drawing the truth out of her. Or worse, making her want to be truthful. “Of course not.” She wets her lips and gives in to the urge to touch the blunt ends of her hair. Steve watches her every move. “But what is this to you, right now?” 

His brows draw together in a frown as he pauses long, and she runs through the answers she’s willing to accept. _Stress relief. Scratch an itch. An apology. I owe you one._ She wouldn’t turn him down for any of those, but she runs through the list again. Would she actually like to hear any of them from his mouth?

She’s never asked anyone before, either because she didn’t want or care to know. 

He puts a hand on her thigh and hooks his fingers just behind her knee. “Guess I just didn’t want you to be alone,” he answers finally, mouth quirking like he’s perfectly aware of the echo in his words. And she should know better than to think she can predict Steve Rogers’ motivations. 

Or, more accurately, she should quit trying to talk down her expectations where he’s concerned, because he has always managed to exceed them. She could even start trusting his consistency there, a little.

Like he can hear her wheels spinning, he ducks down and kisses her, bumping their noses together before he adjusts and angles into it. She lifts her hands to his face, his jaw rough with dark blond stubble. He doesn’t like a lot of tongue, she remembers, preferring gentle teeth and firm kisses, so she keeps them shallow. Neither of them likes a mess.

She knows this about him, and he’s waited two years to have this again—to have her. 

Maybe not Natasha specifically. Probably not. He’s Captain America. His options for who he can trust with himself are limited. He can box up and compartmentalize his sex drive better than any guy she’s known—not that she’s known many for long enough to say with certainty, but Steve doesn’t think with his dick. He—

“Nat, come on.” He nips at her jaw and slides his palms up her thighs so both his thumbs press against the seam of her jeans between her legs.

“Fuck,” she breathes. “Sorry.”

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for,” he says with typical conviction. “What do you want?”

“Just—” She’s weirdly on the verge of tears, her throat thick, her skin too tight and feverish. She might be freaking out. “I just—”

She scrambles for his belt, and fumbling it open is possibly the least cool thing she’s ever done. It’s not until she’s yanked open the front of his jeans that she understands what she’s after. What she really wants.

“I’ve been careful. I’m clean.”

Steve’s chin jerks in a nod. His hands are suddenly just as desperate to peel her jeans and underwear down her hips. “I trust you.”

She knows he does. And it feels so _fucking_ good to have that certainty—it’s like a gift. Something physical she can carry around and sleep with at night. She has Steve’s trust. But they have time now, too, and this ugly bathroom. She wants him _in_ her. 

The material of her jeans is that stretchy leggings-hybrid stuff, so as soon as he’s got them halfway down her thighs, she tugs him in and grips him with her knees. Fabric stretches and pulls, but she’s bendy and strong, so she hikes her legs up, braces one hand on the sink counter, and exhales sharply as he sinks into her, bare. 

“Jesus,” he says on a grunt, his mouth right by her ear, one arm around her like iron, holding her against his body. He bites at her shoulder through her shirt and flexes his hips once before going still. He’s hot and big settled inside her, and she’s not quite warmed up enough for this, but the stretch, the hint of discomfort, is just what she’s after.

She breathes deep and doesn’t quite feel like crying anymore, held here—held open. 

“Okay?” he finally says when she doesn’t move, and there’s a wariness in his voice that she has to respect. This is only the second time he’s had sex, and she was way more careful with him the first time. 

She nods against his shoulder. “Yeah. Just, um. Let’s just stay here for a minute.”

“Sure.” He lifts her slightly, easily taking her weight, and she holds herself up too, liking the burn in her arms and core. It’s always reassuring when her body does what she asks of it. Yeah, she’s not securing the engine room of a hijacked satellite vessel, but acrobatic sex can be impressive too. She’s impressed when Steve begins a slow rhythm, moving her more with the flex of his hips than any other muscle group. 

“Okay?” he asks again, and she nods. “You know, I was thinking we would do this somewhere a little more traditional,” he says, nipping at her neck.

“You know I’m a modern girl,” she answers, rocking against him, finding a rhythm and an angle that helps him to glide more easily inside her, that gets at her clit the way she needs. 

“Horizontal, then.”

She’s wound so fucking tight right now, she’s not sure whether she’s about to come or break into a million pieces. “If you can get us to the bedroom without Sam seeing your ass, I’m all yours on whatever surface you want me.”

He groans. “Sam probably already knows what we’re doing. I’m pretty sure he did last time, too.”

“Wonderful.”

He digs a hand into her hair and pulls her back enough to look her in the eye. The pressure points along Natasha’s scalp light up, and she shivers hard. “But you like it like this.” 

She nods again. “Yeah.”

He spins in place and presses her back against the closed door. “Then I guess the only question is, how quiet can you be?”

She smiles in answer with a finger pressed to her lips and tips her head back as he grinds up into her.

*

Natasha tends not to let herself relax enough to orgasm during sex with other people. It’s a trust thing—there’s no mystery about it. She didn’t two years ago with Steve. The difference is he knows she didn’t, where traditionally she’s been good at faking it. She’s a professional faker—she can certainly fake an orgasm. He’d earned her honesty, though, so she’d told him. Told him the sex was for him and to take it for what it was.

She doesn’t come pressed against the bathroom door, either, though the heat and closeness and sheer _size_ of Steve holding her does what sex with another person normally doesn’t—she feels completely connected. So much that she can almost ignore the way her pants have begun to cut off circulation below her knees. Her neck and shoulder are buzzing from his stubble, and he kisses her there again. 

"What do you need?" he asks quietly. "I want to—" He cuts himself off, and his hips still. 

Insofar as anyone can do it, he slides free of her like a gentleman and sets her on her feet. Natasha covers herself, thighs shaking just a little, hands unsteady on the button of her pants. Had she done something wrong? "It was good," she tries. She doesn't have to come for it to be good, but that's more than she feels capable of explaining right then.

He shakes his head. "How about that horizontal surface?" And Natasha can't think of a time she's ever heard that kind of purpose in his voice. Not off a battlefield anyway.

Yeah, all right," she answers, clearing the roughness from her throat first.

Mouth set with determination, he takes her hand and pulls open the bathroom door. He looks quickly toward the living room, where the TV is noticeably louder than it was, and leads her down the hall to his bedroom. He’s fucked most of the tension out of her, and she smiles at the width of his back, his silent steps, and the glances he darts over his shoulder at her.

She’s reminded of two years ago, the entirety of SHIELD breathing down their necks and Steve on the run with her with all the subtlety of an adolescent after a growth spurt. Uncomfortable in the clothes she’d given him, unsuited for slipping by field agents instead of bludgeoning them with his shield. 

She remembers wanting to be near him that first night at Sam’s after they’d been blown to hell in a HYDRA bunker. With Nick gone, she’d thought Steve was all she had left. “Everything’s fucked,” she’d said after slipping out of Sam’s guest room to find Steve stretched out on the living room couch, not sleeping either. “I don’t know who I’m supposed to be now.”

He’d put his body between hers and exploding debris more times in the last 72 hours than the entirety of their working relationship, and instinct drove her to return the favor somehow. She’d pulled him into her room that night and laid him down on the bed, covered his body with hers in what capacity she could. 

She can admit now she’d also hoped fucking him would reveal to her who she should be, if not a liar and thief. Give her a hint, at least.

He presses her down tonight and strips off her clothes like he’s field-stripping a rifle, so she returns the courtesy. But when it’s just skin between them, he hesitates, kneeling above her with one arm braced by her shoulder. “You’re gonna have to tell me what you like,” he says, eyes tracing from her breasts down to her stomach and lower.

“You may not know this about me, Steve, but I’m pretty bossy in bed. So that won’t be a problem.” She quirks a smile, and Steve ducks his head with an answering grin. 

“Nat, I’m shocked.”

He surprises her, though, when he slides down between her legs and pushes them open wider. Apparently, he has a few ideas of his own. His thumbs are rough and gentle all at once as they press her open. Then he ducks down with purpose and licks a stripe from cunt to clit, and it’s so intimate, she freezes up, almost snapping her thighs closed around his head. Fuck, she could kill him so quickly like this. Not even Captain America would come back from a snapped neck. 

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” she says on a sharp inhale, “but isn’t this a little advanced for your second time with a girl?”

He presses up to his elbows, brow creased in the middle. “You know, I don’t only watch war movies in my spare time. Also, I was in the army—I’ve heard a thing or two.” 

She nods and sees the exact moment when he understands she’s the one who’s nervous.

“Is this not what you want? Just tell me—”

“It’s fine,” she interrupts. Nervous and embarrassed—two of her least favorite things. She hasn’t been either since the 90s. “Go to town, soldier.” Relaxing back against the pillow, she lets her knees fall wide again but anchors her hand in Steve’s hair to keep some bit of control over the situation.

When he starts again but slower, she blows out a deep breath. His tongue is firm but clumsy, like he’s got the idea but precious few concrete details. So she guides his head and rocks her hips up to meet his mouth, and when his tongue catches against her clit, her breath catches too and she says, “There. Right there.”

And for somebody who doesn’t like a lot of tongue when he kisses, he seems to really like eating her out. True to form, though, he doesn’t make a mess of it, pressing her open wide and quickly finding where she’s most sensitive—right at the top of her opening, up to her clit. He finds a steady rhythm and walks her right out to the edge, his tongue dipping inside her and rising so that pleasure crests every time, bringing her closer. 

She tries hard to keep quiet, but her internal muscles are twitching with what’s about to happen, and before she can stop it, a moan slips from her throat. She desperately doesn’t want to tell him that she’s almost as new to this kind of intimacy as he is, but when he squeezes her hand where she’s scrambling at the blanket, she knows it will all come tumbling out eventually.

He holds her hand as she tips over the edge, and the vulnerability of it is excruciating. Her hips lose their rhythm and her feet flex and her voice catches, and she slams her eyes shut so at least she doesn’t have to see what her body is doing. 

When she’s still trembling, and pleasure flutters through the aftershocks, she drags him up and into a kiss, her eyes still closed tight. He turns at the last second with a wordless sound and roughly wipes his mouth on the blanket. She finally blinks in the dark of his bedroom and asks, “Will you kiss me?”

He nods and leans into what is understandably their messiest kiss to date, his beard damp, his mouth tasting like her. But the heat of his body over hers, the brush of his stomach, and his bare thighs pushing her legs up make her giddy and careless. She’s a mess, and it’s fine.

“Get—please, I want—”

“I’m not gonna last long,” he warns, his voice rough. He’s got a hand around himself, the head of his dick just teasing her.

“It’s fine. It’s all fine.” She wraps her legs around his waist and draws him back in, her internal muscles shivering to make room for him. 

He groans and buries his face against her throat, hikes his knees up the bed, and surges into her. “Fuck,” he says with feeling. “Nat, I’m—”

She tugs on his hair and tightens her legs around his waist as he drives his hips against hers in an erratic rhythm. The roughness of it is perfect, and as he begins to shiver apart in her arms, she touches his back and his ass to feel all that muscle in stark relief beneath his skin. She knows he’s not perfect. Knows he’s just a man with some extra mustard thrown on at the cellular level. But she feels… cleaner when he comes in her. 

That part, she’s confident, she’ll take to her grave.

*

They lie together after, and the heaviness of his leg across hers, his arm on her waist, would have made her anxious before. It had two years ago, when she’d escaped to the bathroom and returned to the guestroom to find him gone. She’d rushed to redefine the terms of the friendship then, and they’d been fine ever since.

She doesn’t know what the fuck they are now. The prospect of talking about it scares her, so she holds onto him and rationalizes that he doesn’t know much more about relationships than her, anyway. He might have been a romantic in the 40s, but the 21st Century seems to have stolen that from him, too.

She kisses his temple because that’s the part of him within reach.

“You wanna shower?” he asks, voice a warm rumble against her ribs. “I can help finish your hair.”

She nods. “Yeah, okay.” Then she rubs her hand across his stomach, just in case they never do this again. Turned on his side, it’s a little softer. “Maybe you missed your calling. Maybe you should’ve gone to beauty school.”

“Maybe,” he says in a considering tone. “But then I wouldn’t be here with you.”

end


End file.
